The Bourgeoisie Bargains with the Autocracy, The Autocracy Bargains with the Bourgeoisie

Published:Proletary, No. 7, July 10 (June 27), 1905.

      Published according to the text inProletary.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Foreign Languages Publishing House,1962,

      Moscow,Volume 8,

      pages574-576.Translated:Bernard Isaacs and The Late Isidor LaskerTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2003).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Almostevery day brings fresh evidence of this “bargaining”, to
which we have been directing the attention of the Russian proletarians for so
long a time. Here is an interesting telegram from M. Leroux dated
St. Petersburg, July 2 (new style): A meeting of municipal and Zemstvo
representatives held on June 28 and 29 (15 and 16, old style) once
more (for the
hundredth time!) formulated constitutional demands and telegraphed them to the
ministries. The demands are higher than usual: popular representation is made
an absolute condition, and is to be incorporated in theconstitution;the “Bulygin” Constitution is rejected outright; the demand is put
forth for the immediate proclamation of the inviolability of the person, freedom
of speech, etc. The conference is said to have unanimously adopted (but not
to have included in the

petition—inbargaining one must not show all
one’s cards!) the demand for universal suffrage.

Howdoes the correspondent of the bourgeois paper judge this significant
increase in the demands of the landlords and manufacturers? Oh, his judgement is
a most sober one:

“Itis obvious,”he writes,“that the delegates demand
more in order to get at least a little. But it is certain also that this little,
to be acceptable to them, must lie between that which they demand and that which
Bulygin is offering them.”

Averitable market, at which the bourgeoisie is bargaining away the rights and
interests of the Russian workers and the Russian peasants. As in a market, the
buyer—the bourgeoisie, and the seller—the tsar shake hands on thebargain, shout for the hundredth time that this is their “last
word”, swear that they are “losing money”, threaten to go
away, but cannot bring themselves to break up their close friendship.

Ifthe tsar does not meet our demands, “one of the most prominent members
of the [Zemstvo] conference” said to M. Leroux, “we will appeal to
the people”.

Whatis one to understand by this oft-repeated “appeal to the people”?
the French correspondent asks himself and his readers. And he answers: here
there is no Faubourg St. Antoine (the workers’ district in Paris; cf. the
article inVperyod, No. 2[1]).

The people are inclined to keep off the
street and to stay at home, to protest in the Tolstoian manner by refusing to
pay taxes!...

Donot slander the people, you bourgeois betrayers of liberty! No
slander will ever cleanse the stain of your shameful cowardice. The people are
shedding their blood throughout Russia. Faubourgs St. Antoine of our own are
springing up in a number of towns and in countless villages. The people are
waging a desperate struggle. If you had really wanted to “appeal to the
people” (and not merely threaten your ally, the tsar, to do so) you should
not have assigned hundreds and thousands of rubles for your talking-shops, but
millions for the armed uprising. You should have elected a delegation, not to
cool its heels in the antechambers of the tsar, but to make contact with the
revolutionary

par ties,with the revolutionary people.

Thetsar and his gang know only too well that you are incapable of doing so
because you are afraid for your money bags, because you are afraid of the
people. Therefore the tsar is entirely right in treating you as flunkeys; in
feeding you the same old promises, the same old Bulygin Constitution; in
assuming that you will not dare to make even a real, emphatic protest, not even
against that Bulygin sop. Small wonder that the special correspondent of theJournal de Genève, a “respectable” liberal paper, wrote
recently: “The liberals do not conceal from themselves the imperfections
[!] of the Bulygin plan, butthey think it should be acceptedin the
interests oforderand progress....To reject the government’s
plan would mean deliberately to destroy the last hope for a peaceful outcome to
the present conflict between thepeople and the bureaucratic regime."(The last sentence is underscored
    by the correspondent himself.)

Thebourgeoisie wantspeacewith the tsar and fearsthe war of the
people against the tsar.The tsar wants peace with the bourgeoisie, but
does not fear the war with the people, which he has started and is ruthlessly
continuing. Is it not obvious thatif the people fail to achieve complete
victory in spite of the treachery of the bourgeoisie, the inevitable
outcome of this situation will be the Bulygin Constitution?

[1]The reference is to A. V. Lunacharsky’s article “Outline of the
His tory of the Revolutionary Struggle of the European
Proletariat”, published inVperyod, No. 2, January 14
(1), 1905.